To use a peripheral apparatus, such as an image input apparatus, from an information processing apparatus, generally, it is necessary to install a specific device driver compatible with the peripheral apparatus (e.g. a scanner driver in the case of an image input apparatus) in an operating system (hereinafter referred to as the “OS”) which operates on the information processing apparatus.
When using an image input apparatus, a scanner driver is started from an application, settings necessary for a scanning operation are made, the image input apparatus is driven, and then acquired image data is transferred to the application, whereby the application is enabled to freely handle the image data.
Therefore, conventionally, it is required that scanner drivers have been made available each of which is compatible with both of an image input apparatus to be used and an OS operating on an information processing apparatus. This generates a situation in which a user is required to search a proper scanner driver which operates according to a combination of an OS and an image input apparatus.
Further, users are sometimes required to perform a troublesome work, such as installation of a scanner driver into the OS. On the other hand, manufacturers and sellers of image input apparatuses are required to supply scanner drivers compatible with OS types which have been recently increased in number. Thus, the work for coping with the necessity of installing an appropriate driver is ever increasing.
On the other hand, there has been proposed a method of realizing a function equivalent to the operation of a scanner driver by accessing a Web page hosted by a PC (personal computer) which is directly connected to an image input apparatus, instead of using the scanner driver (see e.g. PTL(Patent Literature) 1).
In this case, the information processing apparatus which accesses the web page is not required to have a scanner driver installed therein.
Further, in recent years, a wide range of various uses of images have been made possible through image processing by so-called cloud computing, which is provided by a web service application operating on server apparatuses on the Internet.
As a method of transferring an image to a server apparatus on the Internet, the following technique is used: An image file is transferred from an information processing apparatus being in use to a desired server apparatus, using a menu option of e.g. image upload, which is integrated in a web page opened by a web browser application of the image processing apparatus. Image file transfer by a dedicated application for file transfer is also widely used.